376 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



ment with Professor Knight extends still further. 

 ' Does the vital,' he asks, * proceed by a still remoter 

 development from the non-vital? Or was it created 

 by a fiat of volition ? Or ' and here he emphasises 

 his question 'has it always existed in some form 

 or other as an eternal constituent of the universe? 

 I do not see,' he replies, ' how we can escape from the 

 last alternative.' With the whole force of my convic- 

 tion I say, Nor do I, though our modes of regarding 

 the * eternal constituent ' may not be the same. 



When matter was denned by Descartes, he delibe- 

 rately excluded the idea of force or motion from its 

 attributes and from his definition. Extension only was 

 taken into account. And, inasmuch as the impotence 

 of matter to generate motion was assumed, its observed 

 motions were referred to an external cause. Grod, resi- 

 dent outside of matter, gave the impulse. In this con- 

 nection the argument in Young's 4 Night Thoughts' 

 will occur to most readers : 



Who Motion foreign to the smallest grain 

 Shot through vast masses of enormous weight f 

 Who bid brute Matter's restive lump assume 

 Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly f 



Against this notion of Descartes the great deist John 

 Toland, whose ashes lie unmarked in Putney Church- 

 yard, strenuously contended. He affirmed motion to 

 be an inherent attribute of matter that no portion of 

 matter was at rest, and that even the most quiescent 

 solids were animated by a motion of their ultimate 

 particles. The success of his contention, according to 

 the learned and laborious Dr. Berthold, 1 entitles Toland 

 to be regarded as the founder of that monistic doctrine 

 which is now so rapidly spreading. 



1 ' John Toland and der Monismus der Qegenwart,' Heidelberg, 

 Carl Winter. 



